Grace Through Friendship

Of all the paths to grace, perhaps no other is as consistently effective as the path of friendship. A true friend gives you a glimpse the creative and loving spirit of the universe. A true friend reminds you that love is the essential nature of being. A friend is the one who sees your divinity despite your doubts. A friend is the person who sees your magnificence despite the momentary glitches in your life. A true friend sees that you are a child of God when you feel like you are the stooge of the devil.

A true friend is more healing than the most competent of therapists. A true friend can be more nurturing than the best of parents.  A true friend can be more loving than the most romantic partner.

The goal of psychotherapy is to remove the psychic blocks that impede your awareness.  A good friend can do this through shared stories, a listening ear, and supportive words of affirmation. A friend liberates you from delusional thoughts that imprisoned your soul.

Parents want the best for their children, but often don’t know how to give the best.  Friends can at times act as surrogate parents, nurturing you to grow into your full potential.

Romantic partners may want the best for you, but their desire to help is at times clouded by their need to receive. A friend is a person who values you, who cares for you, who loves you, no matter what is going on.

 A good friend accepts you for who you are and who you aspire to be and loves you, unconditionally.

A friend helps you feel so connected to yourself, to your community and to the divine, that paradoxically, you no longer need a friend but instead you become a friend.

As social animals, we humans need meaningful social contact. We need friends. Friends are not a luxury; they are a necessity. Studies demonstrate the physiology of human contact. For example, when people are in nurturing human environments, levels of oxytocin goes up (which in turn induces a feeling of well-being) and stress levels go down. Without this contact, humans, like many other mammals, suffer. Studies show that the number one predictor of human happiness is friendship.

 In the U.S. and other industrialized nations, people suffer terribly from isolation and lack of friendship. Many people think they are depressed when really they are starved for friendship. To fill this aching need, people fill up on pills, bigger and more isolating houses and cars, toys and endless distractions. And ironically, the more pills and stuff a person consumes, the less likely they are to seek friendship.

Lack of friendship is not talked about because it is too painful. How many people would rather admit that they are drug addicts, victims of rape, broke, or depressed, rather than admit that they have no real friends?

As children, it is easy to make friends. In societies that are relatively immobile, friendships grow and develop naturally. In mobile societies (such as that of the US) old friends are left behind, and it is often a challenge to make new friends.

For some people, one of the scariest challenges in life is to make a friend. Making a friend is creating a relationship based on truth. Finding a friend is often more challenging than finding a lover, because the potential of rejection is so much harsher. With romance, rejection may be attributed simply to the rejection of an imperfect body part. In seeking friendship, rejection may feel like the rejection of your soul.

Sometimes the first step in creating a friend may be the realization that you have acquaintances who know your facade, but no friends who know your soul.

The second step to gaining a friend is listening to the other person's truth, to what it is about them that makes them come alive.

The third step is revealing your truth, what makes you come alive. This may be the most challenging part, because at this revealing moment you are vulnerable to ridicule, rejection and what may feel like the obliteration of your entire spiritual being.

Paradoxically, even as grace grows out of friendship, grace does not depend on friendship. The moment you depend on a friend is the moment grace is lost. Instead, grace thrives in giving to a friendship, not in the taking.  

An extraordinary magic begins when you risk your soul and create a friend. Once you create one friend, it's easy to create many other friends.

And when you have experienced one true friend, you know what love is, and from this wisdom you may begin to love others and to thrive in grace.